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Gilchesters Miche and Borodinsky Bread

Gilchesters Miche and Borodinsky Bread

Gilchesters Miche and Borodinsky Bread

I made these loaves at home in my new SMEG oven at the end of August.

I have a new job, starting very soon, back on the “Lecturing Circuit”…the best of news! Even better, the work is exciting, challenging and specific to my specialist area of baking. The pay is improved too, and the terms of service. The down side? It means I have to travel even further…to Leeds, a good 100 miles away, and 2.5 hours on the train! This means staying in Leeds through the middle part of the week…ho hum!

Still, I will be at home in Northumberland at the weekends, indeed, 5 nights of the week. I hope to have the wood-fired oven working better very soon, so there should be plenty for me to post on moving forward.

In the meantime, a re-visit to 2 of the breads I am most pleased with producing in the months gone by.

1. Gilchesters Miche

Material

Formula [% of flour]

Recipe [grams]

1. Refreshed Leaven

Total Flour [Carrs Special CC]

27

480

Total Water

16

286

TOTAL

43

768

2. Final Dough

Leaven

43 [27 flour, 16, water]

768

Gilchesters Organic Farmhouse Flour

73

1320

Salt

1.78

32

Water

62

1116

TOTAL

179.78

3236

% pre-fermented flour

27

-

% overall hydration

78

-

FACTOR

18

-

Method:

I began with 40g of levain from stock, which was given 3 refreshments the day before use to end up with 800g mature culture. I retained 32g for stock and used the remaining 768g in the final dough.

Firstly, autolyse the Gilchester flour 1320g] with the water [1116g] required for the final dough, for 1 hour.

Combine the autolyse, levain and salt [32g] and mix gently to a developed dough over 20 minutes.

Rest covered for a bulk proof of 3 hours. One S&F after 1¾ hours.

Scale and divide into 2 x 1.6kg pieces. Mould round and set upside down in prepared bannetons.

Final proof for 3 hours.

Bake profile as follows: Pre-heat the oven for 1¼ hours; take up to 280°C, then allow to sit at 250°C until 15 minutes before baking commences. Take back up to 280°C. Tip the proofed dough piece onto a pre-heated baking sheet dusted with semolina, and cut the top. Use boiling water in a pan filled with stones as a steam source and set the tray and bread onto the pre-heated baking stone. Turn the heat setting to 250°C, and bake for 15 minutes with the fan turned off. Mist the loaf after 8 minutes, and top up the boiling water in the pan of stones to keep the steam supply going. Turn the heat to 235°C. Then drop the loaf directly onto the baking brick, remove the steam source, and switch over to convection baking. Bake a further 25 minutes. Turn the heat down to 200°C and bake for another 10 – 15 minutes. Turn off the oven, but leave the loaf inside, with the oven door ajar for 10 more minutes. Cool on wires.

2. Borodinsky

Material

Formula [% of flour]

Recipe [grams]

1. Rye Sour Refreshment One

From Stock

63 [23 flour, 40 water]

Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour

90

Water

150

TOTAL

303

2. Full Sour

Rye Sour from above

303

Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour

210

Water

350

TOTAL

863 [63 retained as stock]

TOTAL used

80 [30 flour, 50 water]

800 [300 flour, 500 water]

3. “Scald”

Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour

20

200

Red Malt

5

50

Organic Blackstrap Molasses

6

60

Coriander, freshly ground

1

10

Salt

1

10

Boiling Water

35

350

TOTAL

68

680

4. “Sponge”

23:30, Friday 08.07.2011

Rye Sourdough [from 2]

80 [30 flour, 50 water]

800 [300 flour, 500 water]

Scald [from 3]

68

680

TOTAL

148

1480

5. Final Paste

Sponge [from 4]

148

1480

Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour

30

300

Carrs Special CC Flour

20

200

TOTAL

198

1980

% pre-fermented flour

50

[30 from sour + 20 from scald to make “sponge”]

% overall hydration

85

-

FACTOR

10

Method:

Rye sourdough utilised 2 refreshments beginning with 63g stock and ending up with 863g finished culture. 63g retained for stock and 800g used in the final paste.

Make the scald at the same time as the final refreshment of the sour: weigh the red malt [sift as necessary] and dark rye flour into a bowl, add the salt, and coriander, which should be freshly ground using a mortar and pestle. Weigh the molasses into a pan, and pour boiling water onto this to the specified weight. Bring this to a rolling boil on the cooker hob top. Pour onto the dry ingredients and combine well with a stout plastic or wooden spatula. Add any extra boiling water required first by checking the weight of the contents to allow for any evaporation. Cover and cool.

Make the sponge by combining the sour and scald. Cover and hold at 28°C for 4½ hours.

Add the final portion of flours to form the final paste. Cover and bulk prove for one hour.

Scale and divide; 500g for a small loaf, and the remainder for a Pullman Pan, just short of 1.5kg.

Final proof of 3 hours.

Bake with a regular supply of steam in a convection oven at 190°C. The small loaf bakes in 50 minutes, and the Pullman Pan in just over 2hours.

Comments

So good to hear about your new position. It sounds marvelous despite the commute. At least you have transportation that will deliver you there! Here we are forced to drive everywhere....

Loaves look wonderful - as always.

A question about the red malt. For what purpose do you use it? Crust color or flavor? From whence does it gets it's name as the only malt I see around here is tan in color if it diastatic and a rich brown if it is non-diastatic malt - which is more commonly available here in syrup form.

Thanks for posting and sharing your good news....I had been wondering how that would pan out for you...

It's great to have a new job, although it has to be said that the education world in the UK is really not in a good place right now. I hope it gets better, but the Government will either need to change, or else change its philosophy if this is to happen. Until then we all ride a rollercoaster.

Well, we do have trains in the UK, but 30 years of minimal investment from 1960s to 90s means the service is not one to write home about, if truth be told, and it costs a lot to travel too. However, I cannot imagine driving to Leeds on a regular basis; it takes well over 2 hours at the best of times!

Thanks for the reference. I knew it was around somewhere but just couldn't locate it on my own....so many threads out there.

My latest has been in uncovering the differences between diastatic and non-d. malt and how each is made and how they contribute to the end loaf. Through my research I now know the difference and would classify yours in the category of non-diastatic due to the high temps it was exposed to and therefore conclude that it is used for color and flavor rather than the enzymatic contribution.....I think :-/ In the bread world I am finding there is always another door to walk through so I know not to hang on to my definitions too tightly.....but it does sound good!

take care,

Janet

P.S. I also applaud you for hanging in in the edu. system. I have a sister who is struggling now due to all the politics in her school system.....Edu. everywhere is undergoing change that doesn't offer much for either educator or student....Who knows where it all will end. Change is never what we expect and always harder than imagined especially when dealing with huge bureaucratic systems that have somehow lost touch with the common needs of it's people over the years. The sad part is that edu. has become a business and, hence, is looked at throught the lense of profit and loss.....at least that is the way it has unfolded around here.

The breads are lovely as usual, or rather MORE than usual. The miche is simply perfect and the Borodinsky... do I have to say it? even more :-) I like a lot the topping, too. Maybe I should retry to add a tiny touch of coriander, an ingredient that I stopped adding after 2 or 3 bakings. The red malt seems to be doing its job excellently.

Your loaves are excellent, as always. Can you explain what "FACTOR" means?

Gilchesters flour can be replaced with any brand of whole-wheat flour? What about Special CC? I have some organic flours from France (type T80 (farine demi-complete) and T110) and I have to use them in the next months, before they expire. I intend to make a miche this week, and your miche inspires me. I never get a crust so thick. Is the method of steaming that makes the crust thick like yours, or is the temperature of the oven? And the crumb is my idea of a well-done miche. I must give it a try.

The factor is simply the multiplier used with the formula to arrive at the recipe used. For the miche, multiply all ingredients in the formula by 18 for the recipe. The Borodinsky is 10.

Regarding flour, the Carrs Special CC is a white bread flour. It is industrially produced, but of very high quality. The company rightly claim it to be "world class flour". Protein is around 12.8%, but it's the quality that counts, as always, not the quantity. I use this to compensate for how low the gluten quality is in the Gilchesters flour. The protein content is high, but that means very little. Gilchesters Farmhouse flour is what is known commonly as High Extraction flour; it is not wholewheat, the extraction rate is around 85%, I believe. Actually a combination of your T80 and 110 may well make a good substitute for the Gilchesters flour. Always remember, however, that your flour is milled from French wheat, and mine is coming from organic wheat grown in Northumberland....did anyone ever tell you about the weather here in the far North of England???

Andy, congratulations on your new job. Exciting stuff. Yes, that kind of commuting can be a schlepp but it is a small price to pay for all the other benefits. Most pleased to hear that you find it interesting and challenging. The bread is great as always. I like the big "A" for Andy. (Just thought I would add that for those who might have read The Scarlett Letter or thought it stood for something else). :)

Add my congratulations to those above Andy! Both loaves are very attractive, but I'm intrigued by the Borodinsky which you've featured before. It just looks so dark and delicious. It also looks daunting, but the more I see of it the closer I get to rolling up my sleeves and giving it a shot.

Recent posts on the Borodinsky have seen me adopting a more complex process, considered an essential and authentic element of the bread as defined by the Soviet GOST standards. There has been much debate about this, and I hope you have read it; if not, mail me, and I'll send you reference to the best posts.

I still haven't fully cracked it, but!

You need to make a "Scald"...of rye flour, red malt, molasses [or sugar] and water. The authentic red malt comes from rye [your whiskey friends may be able to help!?], but I've used crystal malt from barley, see:

The question seems to be what temperature to raise the water to before making the scald. I use it on a rolling boil to achieve maximum gelatinisation.

However, once cooled, the scald should be added to the rye sour dough , then this is given a further 4 hours of fermentation. Ideally, the scald really should be treated as a "mash", and held around 60 - 66*C [53 - 59*C for Rye, I believe], in order to create maximum diastatic activity and therefore maximum sugar availability for the final elements of fermentation. I also think I should not be adding salt at this stage either. So, still some work to do! But, I encourage you to have a go; I'm sure you would do a great job. No need for you to be daunted

have a go! I was terrified before I tried too, but it sounds harder than it is. You don't actually do much work at all - no kneading, no stretch and folding, no nothing - most of the time the dough just sits there doing its job. What you do need however is to time it very carefully around your day, especially the last sponge-dough-final proof stages. I have allowed mine to overproof on a number of occasions with disastrous results! As I've discovered (and confirmed by Andy and others on another thread) you can't retart a rye dough, the latest stage you can retard at is the sponge.

Also I've still to get to the stage when both my crumb and crust come out well BUT even when I get a brick of a bread, it still tastes delicious! A bit of exercise for the teeth, though ;-)

Well, we both know where education is at right now in the UK; not great. There is lots of potential, but equally, I am aware that political interference comes in so many forms, and it could go pear-shaped very easily. I'll work away in the hope this does not happen.

As ever, thank you so much for your support, and your kind words about the breads

and good luck with your new job. Long commutes are tedious, of course, but at least you can read, or write, during a train ride. And a a more challenging, interesting job - with better pay - is (hopefully) worth the extra effort.

Yes, I can work on the train. Sadly the internet is not available with the train company I use, and my dongle is not reliable enough on the train; the signal is weak and inconsistent between mobile phone masts

Hello Andy, So glad to hear of your new opportunity in Leeds and wish you all the very best! :^)Your miche is just beautiful, and I find your baking technique for this bread very interesting...

Pre-heat the oven for 1¼ hours; take up to 280°C, then allow to sit at 250°C until 15 minutes before baking commences. Take back up to 280°C.

...your baked result is outstanding! I was curious, as to why you lowered the oven temperature 15 minutes prior to loading the oven? (I'm sure your answer will highlight something interesting regarding oven management! :^) ).I like the idea of the pre-heated baking sheet too, and the scoring, as codruta says, is "A"wesome!Karin just posted her beautiful coriander-crusted Lübecker, and how lovely to see your amazing Borodinsky, using coriander too, and that gorgeous red malt.:^) from breadsong

For the oven setting, I raise the heat to 280*C on the convection setting. It beeps at me when it has heated to that mark. At that point, I drop the heat to 250*C. Again, it beeps at me when it has stabled out to 250. Then, 15 minutes before I want to bake, I inject more fresh heat by raising the temperature to 280*C once more.

My reasoning is that I think I may be over-stretching the oven were I to leave it at 280 for the full pre-heating period.

These breads well deserve the "A"wesome labels they were given earlier in the thread. I don't understand the formulas (will do my homework in educating myself in reading and understanding them after I make significant progress in my quest for proper levain bread).

I don't have anything to add to the discussion since I know almost nothing about these breads. I comment because of one element of the discussion above, the color of the bread. When I was a teenager I read an article about black russian bread. I remember the author assertiveness when writting about "cheating" to obtain the typical dark color. His recipe didn't contain coffee or cocoa or other darkening ingredients we often find in recipes. I made his recipe and failed. The bread wasn't very good, barely edible.

Several years later, well after that article was forgotten and lost, I ate a russian bread sandwich in Paris and it made me want to try again making that delicious dark colored bread. I looked for recipes and never was able to find one that wasn't "cheating" (I remembered the strong opinion of the author I've read years ago). All recipes I found contained either cocoa or coffee to (I think) induce the dark color. So I "cheated" away big time and settled instead for the Pumpernickel Bread (contains unsweetened chocolate and unsulphured molasses) or the Eastern European Rye (does not contain any darkening ingredient) recipes contributed by baker Lauren Groveman in the book "Baking with Julia".

So here goes my question(s): Does this mean that the authentic russian black bread is lighter in color that those we usually find in specialty shops or restaurants here in Canada or in France, but more of a medium dark reddish brown? I've never seen the real thing, an authentic loaf of such a bread.

And Andy, the blackstrap molasses, does it serve the purpose of darkening the bread in addition to the other benefits of using a sweetener in bread dough?

Russian rye breads (not all of them) are really dark in colour, similar to chocolate or medium-roasted coffee, because of red malt and partly (I think) because of molasses. Andy's formula contains a little too much mollasses to my liking though (no offence Andy!), that's because GOST calls for sugar as well as molasses (Borodinsky is a sweet-ish bread) and Andy doesn't want refined sugars in his bread so he substituted for molasses. I make mine with about 30-35 g molasses (for the same amount of ingredients as Andy's) + tablespoon sugar + 1-2 tablespoons honey.

As to the colour of Borodinsky, many Russian bakeries have in the last couple of years adopted the practice of making a much lighter coloured bread (not only Borodinsky but other dark varieties too). I'm not sure whether they use more wheat flour, or minimise (even skip?) malt, either way it's not the same :(

Also I've recently found some comments that say, in order to get a really dark crust, Russian bakers "toast" the bread by setting the oven to a very high temperature (different sources site between 260 and 290C ) for the first 10 minutes and then lower it in 20-30 degree increments to a final temperature of around 190C. The top looks almost burnt.

That sounds so earthy, almost kind of umami, sweet umami if that's possible.

There's a significant russian community here in the greater Montreal. I hope someone will open a traditional russian bakery. Meanwhile, I'll certainly try my hand at that formula. The bread looks and "reads" delicious.

I made slight alterations to his recipe though, I use 1/5 to 1/4 less red malt, and as i said I replace 1/3 to 1/2 molasses with a mixture of sugar and honey. I add sugar and honey to the dough, not the scald as they are there for sweet flavour, not to feed the yeast. I also add salt to the dough not the scald. Sorry I can't give you exact amounts as I just use as much as "feels" right. My version tastes almost like the bread from my childhood.

One other thing I may try and change is use very slightly less water as my crumb comes out a bit on the sticky side. Although that could be down to something in my method rather than the recipe.

For my last 2 bakes, I also followed different baking instructions that I found in several other sources. Last night - yip yip hooray!!! - I got a thin crust for the first time! It was really annoying me how thick it used to be (although it gets chewier about 24 hours after baking).

I baked three 350-500 g loaves for an hour to the following scheme (adopted from instructions in suave's blog and a couple other sources):

10 minutes at 240 C (suave says 260 C/500 F), with a generous supply of steam (I poured about half a cupful straight onto the bottom of the oven before putting bread in, as a pan full or water never used to work for me)

after 10 minutes, open the oven door to let out all steam, lower to 210 C (suave says 230C/450 F) and bake for 20 minutes

lastly, lower to 190 C (suave: 210 C/410 F) and bake for 30 minutes.

To soften the crust, some sources suggest that it should be brushed generously with boiling hot water immediately after baking. I found it very hard brushing water on while leaving all those coriander seeds intact, so what I did yesterday is simply pour water onto the loaves from a freshly boiled kettle. It worked. The water evaporates very quickly as the bread is still very hot. When the bread cooled down, the crust was still crunchy (and delicious!) but today it's soft and chewy, just like it should be.

There's a baker's trick I learned about some time ago to soften hard crusts. I tried it for delicate canadian children palates who have difficulty with french bread crisp crust and it worked well for me. May be russian bread has a too hard a crust for that and may be you already know and tried this trick but here we go anyway:

As soon as the bread is out of the oven, cover it with a linen towel (that will touch the surface of the bread without risking lint sticking to it) and then add a thick bath towel folded in two or four on top of the linen towel. The bread should be entirely covered but the fabric can stay loose on it (no need to wrapp tightly). The bread can sit on a cooling rack. Leave the fabrics on it until it has totally cooled. What happens, you guessed it, is the residual humidity of the bread is trapped under the towels instead of vanishing in the air and it softens the crust.

The problem with my crust though was that it was too thick (which in turn made it hard) and that must have been because I was baking for too long at too low a temperature for my size loaf, and also I certainly overproofed my dough on a number of occasions. I'm still learning :-)

Yes, blackstrap molasses has a colouring affect on the paste, and the baked product.

The roots of a bread termed as "black" are all in peasant traditions. I believe Karin suggested that the use of "black bread" in German baking refers to the use of high proportion of rye [particularlarly high extraction] flours in contrast to what we know today as white bread, bread made using white [ie. refined, or, lower extraction] wheatflour. Obviously, coffee, chocolate, cocoa etc play no part in the peasant traditions for North European and Russian territories. This is a good starting point.

Dark colour is obtained by using certain techniques and processes, in addition to sources of [and my personal preference, unrefined] sugar in the materials formula. Molasses that I use is as unrefined as it gets. Faith has discussed red malt in excellent detail. The use of the soaker aims to create increased sweetness. If this sugar is then available, there is more food for the yeasts to feed on. Additionally, if there is any increase in the resdiual unfermented sugars, then that is available to further caramelise the loaf during the baking process, to produce a darker loaf.

Mini, I am pretty sure, began quite a complex discussion about the way the light reflects off the loaf, and how that changes over time as the starches retrograde, thus leading to the loaf taking a darker and darker appearance. I have been discussing this with a colleague this morning, and we believe the darkening colour in the loaf as it ages is largely to do with the amount of residual sugars within the complex starch network and how that impacts on moisture levels and migration.

Regarding the baking, yes the oven is loaded with bread at a very high temperature. But, I believe that is to encourage a rapid rise in dough temperature so the delicate starch network and weak pentosans can set as soon as possible. Subsequently the oven temperature has to be lowered in order to allow full baking, thus driving off sufficient water to enable starch and protein to fully set and Maillard reactions to complete. Remember these loaves are high in moisture, so a thorough bake profile is essential. Reducing the time in the oven just means the loaf will not be fully baked!

I just had a browse through suave's Russian blog, he's got lots of recipes for Russian bread (both rye and wheat)

this is what he writes about Broeodinsky before GOST. It looks awesome! I'm sure I've had something like that before, under a different name. It's a 100% rye bread and a 4-stage method. Google translate should work on it, but if there's something you want clarified I'll help.

i'd translate the whole recipe for the folks on here but my hubby's banned me from TFL due to a large hole in our garden that I'd promised to finish digging by September... <sigh>

My neighbour is russian and I'm sure she won't mind translating a recipe. We never had a conversation about bread and maybe this would be the occasion for us to start one. Last Easter she offered us a delicious homemade sweet bread studded with raisins and fruits glacés. So I know she bakes. And she's a chemist, that certainly can't be bad regarding bread discussions.

That was Kulich she treated you to (pl. kulichi) - a tall, sweet (but usually not as sweet as your average cupcake), dry-ish bread baked for Easter. It's similar to Pannettone and I'm sure a few other ethnic specialties. Glace cherries isn't the most common ingredient, although I don't see why not. What you have in it varies from cook to cook, it could be raisins, nuts, dried or caramelised fruit (or indeed glace cherries), often a combination of several things, quantities also vary, it could be packed full or just have a few on the top. It's also usually glazed (traditional glazing is whipped egg white + sugar, but these days people often use icing sugar and water, either way it needs to be dried in the oven at low heat - you wouldn't usually get a sticky glazing). Often decorated with Easter-themed patterns.

Yes, that was probably a Kulich we devoured, still warm, last Easter. She used raisins and a mix of glacé fruits and did decorate with half glacées cherries on top. And you're right, it wasn't sticky, but I don't remember about a glaze. That delicacy disapeared in less than 15 minutes top-chrono. We have 3 teenage sons, we call them "estomacs sur pattes", roughly translated "stomachs on feet". Looking forward your next time making Kulich.

Meanwhile, I tried google translate to have that page translated in french, just in case it would be better. But no luck. It's as bad as for english. I'll have to wait for my neighbour to come back from work and I'll ask her if she minds translating this. I'll keep you posted.

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